FRENCH: La contemplation

GERMAN: Die Erwägung

SPANISH: La contemplación

Thinking questions:

• How might the language you speak affect your perception of the world?
• What communication methods/tools do we use beyond our language?

Well done to Rohith M in 9A who gained a fantastic 94% and Distinction in his Grade 2 classical piano exam. What a fantastic result and we wish him a similar success in his Guitar Grade 5 exam coming up soon.

If you would like your son/daughter to be featured in the Sandprint, please email Melissa.holian@sandringham.herts.sch.uk with any details and/or photographs that you would like included. 

We would like to draw your attention to the St Albans Sustainability festival which is taking place between 23rd May - 6th June. There is an excellent programme with many events and activities taking place across St Albans and you can find the full details here

You will see Sandringham in the programme as a ‘private event’, as we will be suggesting and encouraging actions here in the last week of half term. In addition, our Head Girl, Jessica Simmons is part of an organising committee running a fantastic event on 2nd June. 

It is a Zoom event to connect local young people (age 14-27) to the politicians that represent them. It will give young people a platform to engage in politics, ask their politicians directly about their concerns around the climate crisis, and how politicians can listen to younger voices in this context more. 

 Date: Wed 2nd of June 2021, 19:00-20:30pm and you can register here

Confirmed panellists: Bim Afolami (Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden), Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat MP for St Albans), Cllr Simon Grover (Green Party Councillor for St Peters ward)

Many thanks to those students who have already brought in items for the FEED collection. We really appreciate your efforts. The final day for collection is MONDAY 10th MAY so please could you bring in any donations of packets, tins, toiletries (nothing perishable please.) This year has certainly been challenging so we would love to get as many donations as possible for this really worthwhile cause. Thank you. 

Students should continue to use a lateral flow test twice a week (Sundays & Wednesdays.) These tests are to be used for people who aren’t displaying any symptoms of COVID-19, but who may still be spreading the virus. Students should complete the two stages of result confirmation as outlined below:

–         Report results to the NHS via this website HERE

–         Let the school know via this google form: HERE

A reminder that if your child does receive a positive result they, and anyone who lives with them, should self-isolate immediately and they should get a PCR test to confirm the result. They should continue to self-isolate until they get the result of the PCR test and then follow the advice given when they get the result.  Full guidance can be found here.

If a student is unwell and showing COVID symptoms listed HERE  Fever (37.8 or higher), Fatigue, Cough or Loss of Smell then they must have a PCR test booked via the NHS, HERE .

This year's Year 12 Young Enterprise team have truly exceeded all expectations. Through a difficult and different year, the team have risen to the challenge of developing their knowledge and skills of setting up and running their own business. We are incredibly proud of all they have achieved, determined to support families through the ever-changing circumstances of today and ensure pandemics and other factors do not act as hurdles to children's learning. They created a series of four activity packs, filled with a range of worksheets and exercises, aimed to educate and entertain primary school children during the lockdown. The packs were designed to cover various aspects of early education and entertainment, with sections covering a wide variety of subjects.

On Wednesday afternoon team Tenacity attended the Young Enterprise North East Hertfordshire Showcase & Awards Event. We are delighted to share the news that they won 3/6 awards for:

1. Best virtual trade stand
2. Best team interview
3. Best company report

With the addition of winning the most prestigious award of overall Best Company award! The team are now through to the regional finals which take place on 20th May, we wish them luck in the next round! A huge thank you to parent, Marina Hop, for her involvement and guidance with the team.

Congratulations to the team:

Justus B, Nabrissa B, Max B, Daisy B, Lizzie C, Kallum C, Georgia D, Naomi G, Adi G, George G, Maya G, Logan H, Scarlett H, Tyler H,  Chris K, Penny K, Sophie M, Felicity M, Jess M, Anna McK, Zak M, Summer N, Harry N, Louis V,  Ainsley W,
 

On Wednesday 5th May, Mr Nicholls and the Finance team arranged a wonderful afternoon tea for all of the volunteers who helped with the Covid-19 testing hub in March. It was a lovely chance for the team to meet up again and reflect on the Herculean task of setting up the Sandpit Theatre, filling in forms, organising equipment, arranging students and completing an impressive 5,000 tests in two weeks. Each volunteer was given a 'Sandringham Hero' pen and were thanked by Leadership for their efforts. Thank you again to everyone who helped make the process so smooth and to Mr Nicholls for coordinating it all. 

We are thrilled to say that the Duke of Edinburgh expedition practices are able to take place again. Yesterday, 42 Year 12 students set out on their Silver assessed / Gold Practice DofE. They will return on Saturday, hopefully enriched by the experience and having put their skills to work. We will feature more details in next weeks Sandprint but good luck to all of those involved and for future years, next weeks article will be a great chance to read about what the process involves. You can speak to Mrs Cuneen or Mrs Borman if you would like further details.

This week we celebrated the success of our Year 13 students with a small Awards Ceremony. It goes without saying that these students have faced a lot of disruption and that their Sixth Form experience hasn’t been ‘normal’ but we are incredibly proud of the maturity and resilience that they have shown and enjoyed celebrating with them yesterday. Thursday 27th May marks their last day in school together and we hope that it is a lovely day spent with friends and a time for reflection on how far they have come. 

The Henrietta Branford Writing Competition is an annual competition for young people which runs in conjunction with the prestigious Branford Boase Award. The competition is now open to anyone aged nineteen or under. The starter paragraph, written by author Liz Hyder, is available on the Branford Boase Award website. Students who wish to enter should use the paragraph as a starting point then carry on with their own story. Each story can be any length up to one thousand words, not including the starter paragraph. 

Students can submit directly on the Branford Boase Award website by Sunday 23rd May or email their entries to Miss Critchley by Wednesday 15th May who will be submitting the stories from Sandringham students. We already have a few entries from our writing club and look forward to receiving more from our creative students.

Here at Sandringham, we realise the importance of celebrating individual heritages and are looking at the impact that this collection of origins has on our community. As such, Ms Finlay recently sent out a survey to find out where students were born, or which nationality they identify with and Ms Warris has used the results to create this fantastic graphic to be displayed around the school. Mr Brown is also working with the SLT to create a Culture Calendar which features events valued and celebrated by members of the school community (be it religious, cultural or of other significance.)  Additionally, as a school, we aim to promote under-celebrated influential individuals who have had a positive impact in diversity representation or have been driving forces for equality throughout history/present day. We look forward to updating you further on these developments. 

F4 in the Art Block is named after Yayoi Kusama, a Japanese contemporary artist who is famous for her polka-dot themed sculpture and installation, painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry and fiction. 

Born on the 22nd March 1929, in Matsumoto City, Nagano, Kusama showed an interest in art from a young age. After suffering from a hallucination (where she felt like a field of flowers were talking to her), she started drawing pictures with polka dots which became her signature motif for most of her artwork. Despite the disapproval of her parents, Kusama went on to study Art at University in Kyoto and then moved to New York where she continued to create her vivid artwork culminating in her first, highly popular, exhibition in 1957. 

In 1966, she received international acclaim when she was the first woman to represent Japan in the 33rd Venice Biennale. And her now iconic Narcissus Garden (consisting of dozens of silvered spheres) put her firmly on the map as an artist to watch. Around this time, she also showed an interest in politics, climbing the Brooklyn Bridge clad in a polka-dot leotard in protest of war and the deleterious effects of capitalism. Her 1968 movie also won the prize of The 4th Belgian International Short Film Festival. 

When she returned to Japan in 1973, Kusama suffered a mental breakdown and since 1977, she has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric institution, with much of her work marked with obsessiveness and a desire to escape from psychological trauma. Her Infinity Room installations (pictured) are designed to make you feel like you are in an apparently endless space and re-create her feelings of self-obliteration.  

Kusama continues to create artwork but has worked on fashion collaborations with Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton and Lancome. And she has also had several books published including eight novels and several books of poetry. In 2009, she was selected as a person of culture and to this day boasts the highest auction prices of any living woman artist, with her 1960 "Infinity Net" painting selling for $7.1 million in 2014.

Every time I have a problem, I have confronted it with the axe of art. 

Every week the Mathematics Faculty publish a puzzle for you to try.  For every entry you will receive 1 housepoint, if you answer correctly you will win 2 housepoints and if you are the fastest person to answer the puzzle correctly then you will win 5 housepoints!  To enter, simply scan the QR code and fill out the google form.  Good luck!

For this week’s whole school theme, students were asked to consider the trustworthiness of information that is shared in the media, particularly online. The students received an assembly from Mr Allday that did a fantastic job of getting students to challenge the assumptions that they make when faced with online information. Information online comes in many forms – news articles, video content, blogs, information pages and more. Before the internet, the challenge was finding what we needed. Now we are now faced with such a volume of content that the challenge has become sifting through it and working out what is accurate and useful. Critical thinking includes various important skills that all online users, but especially young people, need to navigate the internet safely to find accurate and reliable information.

‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte was first published in 1847, and is one of my favourites from the ‘Sandringham Reads’ list! An intense love story set on the Yorkshire Moors, the novel follows two wealthy families, the Lintons and the Earnshaws, and their turbulent relationships with Heathcliff, a man of mystery, who has been adopted by the Earnshaws. As well as being a love story, ‘Wuthering Heights’ could also be said to be a story of revenge, as it follows the life of Heathcliff, from childhood to his death in his late thirties. Heathcliff rises in his adopted family and then is reduced to the status of a servant, running away when the young woman he loves decides to marry another. He returns later, rich and educated, and sets about gaining his revenge on the two families that he believed ruined his life. Learn more here: https://wuthering-heights.co.uk/index

We have the above vacancies at Sandringham For more details please go to 

https://sandringham.herts.sch.uk/vacancies/

C is for… contemplation [noun]

Definition: The act of thinking deeply about something.

Example: The month of Ramadan lasts 30 days and is a time of contemplation.

Synonyms: Meditation, Reflection, Reverie

Antonyms: Ignorance, Avoidance, Disdain

Etymology: From the Latin word ‘contemplat’ meaning surveyed or observed.

As a World Class school, we aim to provide our students with the skills to use critical thinking when reading or listening to information. We ask them to think about factors such as bias, sensationalising, accuracy and evidence to name a few.

For example when reading a newspaper or watching the news on TV, we invite you to consider 'who has decided what makes headline news? Who decides what the general public wants to hear about? Do we hear all the news for that day or just from wherever the news channel happens to have based their correspondent.' 

There can often be a conflict between what is considered newsworthy, for example Mrs Kirby noticed that the news once spent 25 minutes discussing Princes Diana’s dress, then casually said at the end that there had been an earthquake in China killing hundreds of people. Who had decided then what news should take priority?

The LRC provide 3 newspapers for students to read: The Guardian, The Mail and The i- newspaper. It may be worth thinking about how tabloid newspapers often reflect on gossip and scandal and can be more sensational, but how broadsheet newspapers aim to be more factual and give more information. Both may show political bias howeverm, so must be read with this awareness in mind. Here at Sandringham we encourage students to think carefully about what they are hearing (are the words sensationalised?) and what they are seeing (does this evidence back up the words?) and have conversations about what they think could be the "truth."

This week we feature a presentation from Vasyl R in Year 12 who explores "World Class Healthcare." Medical innovation is paving the way to a future in which people are living longer and living better lives with regular and unconditional access to high-calibre healthcare in the UK. But Vasyl explores the fact that not everyone can access this ‘ world class healthcare’ and examines how we may work to overcome inequality and inaccessibility within the system. You can watch the full presentation here and see more articles from the World Class Schools team on their website.

We were excited to have our first competitive sports fixture of the year on Wednesday- Tennis vs Aldwickbury. The Year 7 and 8 A Team played in County League with Meesam A and Harrison H winning both their singles and doubles matches putting us into a tie break shoot out. Ryan L and Meesam just lost in the end but it was great to see everyone playing again during a brief respite from the rain this week. A mention too, to Shaun S who played brilliantly in his first competitive match but came under stiff competition vs a strong Aldwickbury side.

Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers are among his most famous works and are some of the most iconic paintings in the world. In an extraordinary exhibition, the Van Gogh Museum took a new revealing look at the five publicly owned versions of sunflowers in a vase. And once again, the Van Gogh Museum opened its doors exclusively to Exhibition on Screen. Tickets £7/5

The new 25th Anniversary show catapults Riverdance into the 21st century and will completely immerse you in the extraordinary and elemental power of its music and dance. 25 years ago, 7 minutes changed the face of Irish dancing forever. The Eurovision interval act performance gave millions of people a new and exciting glimpse of the future of Irish dance. Now 25 years later, composer Bill Whelan has re-recorded his mesmerising soundtrack while producer Moya Doherty and director John McColgan have completely reimagined the ground-breaking show with innovative and spectacular lighting, projection, stage and costume designs. This powerful and stirring reinvention of the beloved family favourite is celebrated the world over for its Grammy Award-winning music and the thrilling energy of its Irish and international dance. Filmed live at the 3Arena Dublin, the exact spot where it all began, the 25th Anniversary Gala Performance will bring Riverdance to the big screen for the very first time! Tickets £13.50/£10

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake comes to cinemas with a fresh look for the 21st century and is as bold and beautiful as ever. This thrilling, audacious and witty production is perhaps still best known for replacing the female corps-de-ballet with a menacing male ensemble, which shattered convention, turned tradition upside down and took the dance world by storm. Tickets £13.50/£10

Hailed as a masterpiece of 21st century dance, Akram Khan’s Giselle comes to cinemas for the first time, giving ballet fans the opportunity to see this award-winning production on the big screen.  One of the greatest romantic ballets, Giselle has been re-imagined by celebrated choreographer Akram Khan and English National Ballet. Tickets £13.50/£10

Following its record-breaking, sell-out run in London’s West End and national tour, the critically-acclaimed musical Funny Girl comes to a cinema near you, featuring Sheridan Smith in “an unforgettable star turn” (The Times). Funny Girl is semi-biographical, based on the life and career of Broadway star, film actress and comedienne Fanny Brice (a role made famous by Barbara Streisand on Broadway and in the 1968 film adaptation),  and her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nick Arnstein.

Praised by critics as having “irresistible charm, wit and warmth” (Metro), and hailing Sheridan Smith as “the greatest star by far” (The Daily Telegraph), Funny Girl features a host of iconic and timeless musical numbers including “People,” “I’m the Greatest Star,” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade.” Tickets £13.50/£10

We look forward to welcoming you back through our doors very soon and remember we are a socially distant venue so seats will disappear very quickly so don’t miss out and get your tickets now!

Following Government guidelines, you must wear a face covering while attending The SandPit Theatre unless you are exempt as stated in these guidelines. If you do not wear a mask you will be refused entry and your ticket will be forfeited. Our café will be open during these screenings for drinks and snacks but please note we will only be accepting card payments. Alcohol is available for sale 30 minutes before the shows begin.

The box office is open from 11.30am – 3.30pm Monday to Friday. Alternatively, you can call us on 01727 799565 or visit www.sandpittheatre.co.uk

Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet is a passionate and contemporary re-imagining of Shakespeare’s classic story of love and conflict is set in the not-too-distant future in the ‘Verona Institute’. Here ‘difficult’ young people are mysteriously confined by a society that seeks to divide and crush their youthful spirit. Our two young lovers must follow their hearts as they risk everything to be together. Tickets £13.50/£10